Search by Specialist's Name

Search by Specialty

Alaska Medical Specialties

Alaska Medical Specialties provides all the resources and technology of
a large healthcare center on a more personal scale, offering great care
right at home in Alaska. We take an integrative care approach, designed
to treat the whole person and not just the disease. We operate on the
firm foundation of doctors who are experts in their fields, a team approach,
and a patient-centered staff.

Alaska Medical Specialties offers comprehensive medical care in four sub-specialties,
including cancer treatment, urology, women’s health, and clinical
research. Our doctors are experts in one or more specialties, making great
healthcare possible without leaving Alaska. Learn more about our centers below.

Alaska Clinical Research Center

Antibody Therapy

Antibody therapy is a relatively new method of
biological cancer treatment that seeks to help the patient’s body identify and destroy cancer cells.

A person’s body normally defends itself again foreign antigens, such
as bacteria and viruses, by producing antibodies, which are proteins that
attach to the antigens and then recruit the rest of the body’s immune
system to neutralize the cells containing the foreign antigens.

Recently, doctors have developed ways to create molecules called “monoclonal
antibodies” in a laboratory environment that are engineered to attach
themselves to specific cancer cells. Hopefully, attaching the laboratory-produced
antibodies to the cancer cells will make those cells “more visible”
to the patient’s body and stimulate the patient’s immune system
into attacking the cancer cells.

Unfortunately, because antibody therapy is new, it has not been developed
to treat every type of cancer and some types of antibody therapy are still
considered experimental. Therefore, some forms of antibody therapy may
be appropriate only for cancers that have not responded to better-established
treatments.

That said, antibody therapy is so promising that doctors are working on
developing versions to treat other diseases, as well, such as arthritis
and multiple sclerosis.

At the Institute, our oncologists can help you decide if antibody therapy
is right for you and, if it is, how antibody therapy can be used effectively
in concert with your overall therapy. We can administer antibody therapy
here in our new office via chemotherapy or, by combining radioactive particles
with the monoclonal antibodies, via radiation therapy.